[TRENCHES] Tuesday, August 19, 2014 - Change Of Heart
LegionPerseus VeilRegistered User, Moderator, Penny Arcade Staff, Vanilla Staff vanilla
Change Of Heart
http://trenchescomic.com/comic/post/change-of-heart
What’s your security clearance?
AnonymousIn the mid-90s I was working my first real computer job, tech support for a company that made software for producing GUIs, primarily for UNIX and VMS (look it up, kids) systems. Our largest customers were various branches of the US Government, ranging from the utterly innocuous (census, bureau of land management, etc) to the CIA, NSA and other less-well known branches. (Fun facts: When asked whom they work for, CIA employees just say “The Federal Government”, whereas NSA employees say “the Department of Defense”, and When you call someone at the NSA, they answer the phone by just saying the last 4 digits of their phone number you just called).
Anyway, something we were constantly running into was the need to see the code that people were having trouble with, but often being told that they were unable to share the code with us unless we had security clearance (We did not.) Normally this just meant a quick and easy way to close a ticket—Can’t show us the code? Well, then, we really can’t help you, sir. Case closed.
However, one day my colleague (I’ll just call him Mike) had a call from someone at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center, which was one of other big customers. He was having a problem with the code being output by the GUI-builder, and was under some huge deadline. He was absolutely desperate, and so the typical exchange of Security Clearance? No? Can’t help you! was broken by the caller saying “ok, look, fine, I’m going to send you the code, but you CANNOT tell anyone, and you need to delete it immediately after finishing with it. Or ELSE.”
Fair enough. Mike gets the guy to send the code in, he opens it and it’s some sort of GUI to be used for tracking submarines/ships/missiles/torpedoes, etc. Mike finds the problem with the code, fixes it, and sends it back to the dude at the NUWC. However, Mike then decides that this is too interesting to just delete, and instead goes about writing a back-end to turn it into a war-game, which the rest of us in Tech Support (not-knowing it’s origin) start playing obsessively on the server in-between calls for a couple of weeks, before finally one of the bosses thinks to inquire as to where Mike got the game. He tells them he wrote it, and then tells them the story of where he got the front-end. Everyone in the room falls silent as the boss’s face goes first pale, pale white, and then beet red. Everyone in Tech Support except for Mike got sent home for the afternoon, and when we came back the next day, the game was gone from the server, and Mike was gone from his cube.
Posts
Never trust a Mike. Michaels are much better.
On the other hand that did sound like a pretty sweet game. It would probably have been better for "Mike" to copy the code somewhere he could get it at home, tweak the UI elements so they're still functional, but look different enough that no one would suspect about the code, make his back end, sell the whole experience on steam for $5-10, and tell fucking NO ONE this story.
Might be a bit difficult, as it went down in the mid-90s.
I can't seem to figure out how to repeatedly agree with your post.
Who said he was fired? Mike stole - literally stole - classified military software, repurposed it for his own use, and distributed it freely within his own community. The military probably still has a kill-on-sight order for the poor bastard. That, or the author forgot to mention that the carpets had also been replaced the next day...
This story sounds like a pretty secent premise for a film, though...
"Mike" apparently thought that professionalism is optional, which is why he lost his job.
PSN ID: fearsomepirate
Life finds a way!
...but yeah, I forgot the timeframe when I was posting...ooops.
The whole: Manager Turning Beat Red, then having to stay behind while everyone else left, and then being gone from his cube the next day strongly implies that he was terminated. And he didn't steal the code either literally or figuratively. He was given the code by his client for work and instructed to delete it when he was done. He didn't follow the instructions and misused the code, and that's really bad and super illegal, but he didn't steal it. And I highly doubt that the military has him on a kill list, it seems that the company did everything they could to hush-up the incident so the military wouldn't find out.
Last I heard, Mike landed on his feet, but as a developer. Probably for the best, since the other good Mike story involved him saying to a customer "Oh, I know what your problem is, sir! Can you hold, please?" *places customer on hold* Shouts: "YOUR PROBLEM IS THAT YOU'RE A FUCKING MORON!" *takes customer off hold* "Oh, sorry, sir. Where was I?"... Suffice it to say that Mike didn't really have the proper mentality for a customer-facing job.
That's why the contractor in this story deleted all the code and fired the employee instead of basing a new video game on the code with a special thanks to the federal employee mentioned by name.
PSN ID: fearsomepirate
but the question isn't really 'can mike avoid possible criminal charges for disclosing state secrets,' it's 'did mike potentially jeopardize a major contract because he's a dumbass?'
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget